Yesterday i was reading in a grammar book that also explains いる and ある. I was not reading it because i already knew when and how to use both. As we all know, 猫がいる means: There is a cat (animate), and 本がある means: There is a book. (inanimate)

Thought experiment: I walk down the street, and see a person on the other side, standing in front of a shop. In Japanese i would say: ...人がいる... There is (exists) a person over there. Some hours later i come back, and see a crowd, where the person from before was standing. When i come closer, i see, that the person is dead.

This leads me to the following question: When the person is now dead, would i still go and say ... 人が いる ...?

Because the grammar points clearly says: When something is alive or animate, you will use いる to refer to it. For inanimate things, and objects, you will have to use ある.

Now, when someone is dead, he is inanimate, and thus no longer exists, but the body of the person would still be there. With this in mind, would it be correct to point out and say: ... あそこに人がある ...?

What would you think, is it いる or ある in this case? And how about water? Water is animate, but yet a nonliving thing. So is it valid to use いる when talking about water, or is it ある all the time, since it's not a living thing, but animate?

"animate" doesn't mean "moving", it means "alive" and "able to move voluntarily". A corpse, and water, would both use ある.

Apparently, the dead live.
犬は死んでいるよ。 The dog is dead.
その兄弟は２人とも死んでいる。Both the brothers are dead.
彼女は男が死んでいるのを見つけた。She found a man dead.
Source: http://jisho.org/sentences?jap=iru&eng=dead

I honestly don't know, personally. I would have thought ある, but my Japanese split-personality says いる。でも、水は「いる」と「ある」... どちらかな？　英語... ahem... I mean I checked and it wasn't very enlightening. I think the water example I will leave for someone else (｢ある｣と思う）

Quote:That's just the usual ている form (or いる doing its auxiliary verb job, if you prefer looking at it that way). Compare 石が落ちている.

This looks like a reasonable native-speaker view:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/vi … 4179#p4179

Ignore me. I must be way too tired. Lol, obviously so.

Checked this on Google using results as a determiner. Blogs showed up 30 times more usages of 死体がある than 死体がいる, news was 2 results for the former, books was 100 times more usages of 死体がある, videos = 9-0 results. I guess I forgot the rules above and didn't check with native material first (that and being up for 24 hours.)

By the way, this is a good discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang.japan/browse_thread/thread/42e39f4933b2cad0/71e64fc9e0e063ad

Apparently いる is only possible in certain situations with dead bodies.

Cranks Wrote:Apparently, the dead live.
犬は死んでいるよ。 The dog is dead.
その兄弟は２人とも死んでいる。Both the brothers are dead.

That's just the usual ている form (or いる doing its auxiliary verb job, if you prefer looking at it that way). Compare 石が落ちている.

This looks like a reasonable native-speaker view:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/vie...4179#p4179

川には水がありませんでした。There was no water in the river.
びんの中には少し水があった。There is a little water in the bottle.
コップにはほとんど水がありません。There is little water in the glass.
http://jisho.org/sentences?jap=&eng=Water+there

If you look at this sentence, we could assume that it would likely be ある, but I'm not sure.
川には水がありませんでした。
[River]in{topic}water{connector}exists-not-[past tense].

Hence,

あそこに水がたくさんあるね。
[There]{target}water{connector}lots-exist, isn't there{request agreement}

Would be ok? Opinions, please.

P.s., I think the rule is if it has a pulse then it's いる no pulse then ある。Plants would probably be ある (I secretly checked google. It's 7 times more likely to be ある.)

みずがいる gets 30,000,000 results on google
みずがある gets 97,700,000 results on google (hence, 3 times more likely to be right.)

Cranks Wrote:みずがいる gets 30,000,000 results on google

You're running into the other いる (to need), eg the first page of hits is all examples like
しかし牛丼1杯作るのに2000リットルもの水がいる!

Good point. I should have conjugated it to いります and います. I didn't really consider that when I Googled it, but it is really an excellent point (470,000-2,600 is a MASSIVE variation). Lol, this thread has been quite useful to me, sorry OP! (I'll have to restudy いる/ある as I'm obviously a bit shaky on this rather basic grammar point!!! Not a good thing.)

Thanks PM215. You've really helped me out tonight!

There's a sentence in the kore series that has perplexed me for a while.

あそこにパトカーがいる。

Could someone explain this? I always thought いる was strictly for living things and this thread seems to confirm that, but I'm still not completely sure because of this sentence. I don't think it's a typing error since the audio says いる as well. ( http://assets2.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JL...07409A.mp3 )

See the remarks in the link I posted about vehicles with and without people in them...

thank you

Bonus link: magamo forum post on that パトカー sentence.

Koujien gives the simple explanation that sometimes, inanimate things that move take いる, like the patrol car or a bus.

(Another exception is that sometimes people are ある when you are discussing them only in terms of their existence -- i.e. 田中さんは子供が２人ある.)

I was just reading about the possessive ある in possessor ascension type constructions with regards to constraints for using possessive ある when discussing two animate entities* (see p. 75 of DOBJG or 30-3 of Shibatani). Anyway, I came across this fascinating tidbit in the linked Shibatani .pdf:

“An interesting reflection of Japanese culture in this regard is that, while a husband can possess his wife, a wife cannot possess her husband in the ある construction... ” (p. 33)

*Worth noting that beyond DOBJG's entry, Shibatani provides more examples than just close kin for possessive ある here, such as acquired features or personal traits (p. 32).

I was wondering if maybe that had changed in the 25 or so years since DBJ, but it's very hard to search on google because there are too many false positives with the other meaning of ある, things like 妻がある日 or the like.

Do you mean the wife/husband thing? I'm curious about that, as I'd never heard of it before. Was it simply an ingrained linguistic custom? Does it just apply to that wife/husband dynamic with the possessive ある? Is that form of the construction relatively uncommon? If so, I could see it being something that wouldn't be ‘corrected’ through usage due to its relative rarity, unless specifically targeted by a Japanese adherent of Cixous or their own version, or something. ;p

I couldn't find the Japanese orthographic equivalents to the sentences Shibatani provided, for any script/variant.

“まみさんに(は)よいごしゅじんがある。” (Shibatani p. 33)

Edit: Keep in mind Shibatani wrote that in 1999 or 2000. So that's 11 years ago, and perhaps they were working with outdated information when bringing up this incidental aside. By the way, Shibatani has a fun bit on the Japanese ‘subject’ here: http://books.google.com/books?id=sD-MFTU...22&f=false (1990)

To add even more complexity to the topic, how about the expression:
I think therefore I am.
私は考える、だから私はある。

LazyNomad Wrote:To add even more complexity to the topic, how about the expression:
I think therefore I am.
私は考える、だから私はある。

Isn't it usually 「我思う、ゆえに我あり」？

Edit:
It seems like when people are talking about was Descartes meant, they usually use 存在する rather than ある or いる, even thouh the expression uses あり. Nevertheless, ある is often used too. This is in the metaphysical sense, in the same way that 存在する is (probably it would be written with the kanji 在る when used this way). When you say 'He's in the bank', 「銀行にいる」, you obviously don't mean it in the metaphysical sense. So that seems to be another distinction between the two words--いる doesn't refer to metaphysical existence.

Edit2: It also seems like 私は考える、だから私はある is used--but usually as a translation of "Je pense, donc je suis.", and what I posted is usually how "Cogito ergo sum" is translated.　　I like that it's just trying to make the latin sound fancy.

Tzadeck, you are right.
I also noticed this link: http://www.japanlink.co.jp/ol/bei.html
It seems like for short period of time between 19th and 20th centuries, 「存在」 also had the reading [ある].

If you choose to use 人 then you will use いる. They go together.

If you're going to be technical, you wouldn't use the word 人 if you were referring to a dead body. Most of the time, if you saw the person alive and he or she just died, you wouldn't say "it" in English either, since there is still some attachment and it's still considered to be a person. Out of respect, you'd continue to use いる unless you switch to another lifeless term like corpse.

Even in English, you'd continue to say he or she for a person that just died, but if you start refering to the corpse, then it's it.

I know it comes a bit late but ... I want to thank all of you who took their time to answer my question. Also i'd like to say thank you for providing some more resources, so i can further investigate about いる and ある. From reading through some of the resources, i really think that it is worth the time taken, to find out more about it.

Tzadeck Wrote:

LazyNomad Wrote:To add even more complexity to the topic, how about the expression:
I think therefore I am.
私は考える、だから私はある。

Isn't it usually 「我思う、ゆえに我あり」？

Edit:
It seems like when people are talking about was Descartes meant, they usually use 存在する rather than ある or いる, even thouh the expression uses あり. Nevertheless, ある is often used too. This is in the metaphysical sense, in the same way that 存在する is (probably it would be written with the kanji 在る when used this way). When you say 'He's in the bank', 「銀行にいる」, you obviously don't mean it in the metaphysical sense. So that seems to be another distinction between the two words--いる doesn't refer to metaphysical existence.

Well, one other thing to note here is that in classical Japanese, あり is used for both inanimate and animate things. いる originally meant "sit down" in classical and only developed the other meaning later. So if you have a pseudo-classical phrase like 我思う、ゆえに我あり, the あり is taking on its classical meaning. I don't think there's a metaphysical difference because you can say things like 夢にいる or 心にいる.

I'm not so sure. I didn't know that あり was used to refer to both, but that still doesn't explain why the translation of the french, which LazyNomad posted, uses ある. And, if the link Nomad posted is correct, at least in philosophy translations ある has been used when talking about ontology.

心にいる and 夢にいる are actually something completely different. I'm talking about using ある to distinguish that something actual exists in the real world, which doesn't really have anything to do with metaphorical existence in thoughts or dreams.